Restaurant Reviews

Just as it was in Brighton, for better or worse I wasn't crazy about Zocalo when it was in Brighton, but others were. Now it has reopened near Back Bay Station, and the food and drinks are much the same.

A winning take on fantastic ancient cuisine This fine new Afghan restaurant makes it official: the odd-numbered side of Brighton Avenue between Harvard Avenue and Linden Street has so many good ethnic restaurants that you could eat out in a different country every week and never even cross the street.

Half bistro, half sports bar, all quality The original Anthem (RIP, 2007) was half bistro, half sports bar, all competent in a way that made it the best oversize restaurant ever between the Department of Mental Health and the variously named Boston Garden.

Chef Outhier's spiritual son misses the point As the auteur of multiple restaurants on three continents, Jean-Georges Vongerichten has avoided many of the traps for unwary superstar chefs, such as overpriced pizza, videos of himself at the front of the restaurant, or a signature line of frozen entrées.

A neighborhood bistro for Cambridge's crunchy side We'll get to the "socially responsible" cuisine, the organic rum and vodka drinks, and the Whole Foods mix of health and gourmet at this bistro, which is remarkably relaxed for all that right thinking.

Much more than pizza in Dorchester, and South African delights in Provincetown Tavolo snuck under my radar because Chris Douglass, then well-known for Icarus, had made his first Dorchester move with Ashmont Grill, an admitted bistro.

Giving the Scottish their long overdue credit for cuisine How is a Scottish gastropub different from the Irish kind we know so well in Boston? Is it like Trainspotting versus The Commitments ? Well, sort of.

Embrace the pot and enjoy the party I don't much like any of the international versions of boil-your-own food — fondue, shabu-shabu, Mongolian hot-pot, Taiwan, Thai, Vietnamese — but if you must, this is the right way to do it.

A tale of two dinners I thought I knew all about Sichuan food, back from when Joyce Chen and Peking on Mystic introduced what was then called "Mandarin-Szechwan" food to the United States via greater Boston.

Solid appetizers and late-night menu, just too conservative for the Theatre District Despite a year of planning, Noche still needs to find its niche. As it is, it seems to be rattling around in the big-shoes-to-fill of its predecessor in the space, Icarus, one of the first fine South End bistros.

What's wrong with this flavor? I understand the "vegan" thing two ways. Either you are a capital-V Vegan from another star system, or you eat vegetables and no animal-origin products like diary or eggs.